The Counterfeit Agent (18 page)

“You didn’t think you should tell us about this earlier?” Bunshaft said.

“I called the seventh floor as soon as I got in—”

“Yesterday, I mean. Last week. When it could have done some good.”

Now Shafer understood the note-taking. Bunshaft had wanted to be sure of every detail so he could use them all for the prosecution, like a detective listening to a husband offering a half-assed alibi for the night his wife was killed.

Duto had warned him, but he’d refused to listen. Now Shafer was a convenient scapegoat if the congressional investigators came calling.
We could have stopped the attack if these guys had told us instead of freelancing.

“This has all come together in the last three, four days. Duto only called me and Wells last week. We had to have the name. Imagine I’d come to you with a story about a disgruntled case officer whose name we didn’t even know.”

“Do you know when the Colombian—”

“Montoya—”

“When Montoya initially called the senator?”

Shafer shook his head.

“So, just so I have this timeline right, John Wells informed you on Monday about the possibility there might be a personal motive for an attack on a station chief—”

“Right, Monday. I told Duto. He said he’d call some of the guys he’d worked with. Came back to me with a name last night.”

“What time?”

“Right around midnight. I think he was maybe ten minutes too late.”

“If you’re playing some other angle on this, tell me now.”

“My angle is to get you to find Glenn Mason.”

“And the senator and Mr. Wells will confirm what you’ve told me.”

“Of course.”

Bunshaft stood. At the door, he stopped. “Stick around this afternoon, okay? Carcetti may want to talk to you.” Max Carcetti was Hebley’s chief of staff and enforcer. Hearing his name didn’t inspire confidence.

“I’ll be here.”

—

He called Wells and Duto, told them to expect questions from Bunshaft. Then Joyner called. “What you want is a paper file, hasn’t been scanned.”

“I thought everything from the late nineties was scanned—”

“Not everything, not for officers who have departed the agency. Those are in the files downstairs. You want it, go get it yourself. I’d do it sooner rather than later because suddenly the PTB”—a Joyner expression,
powers that be
—“seem interested in your man.”

“Will the records guys let me in?”

“I’ll tell them. This is the last favor, Ellis. I mean it.”

The personnel records unit was on the second floor of the Old Headquarters Building, shrinking steadily as files were digitized and archived to cold storage in the West Virginia mountains. In twenty-five minutes, Shafer had the forms. In 1999 and 2000, Glenn Mason reported a relationship with Julia Espada, a reporter and translator for the Associated Press in Lima. His report for 2001 didn’t mention her. The name was common, but Shafer figured tracking down an AP reporter, or ex–AP reporter, should be easy enough.

Back in his office, he turned up Espada after ninety minutes of searching, mostly on public databases. She was an American citizen now, lived in Houston. He called Wells to pass along her name and address.

“I’ll go to Houston tonight.”

“Try not to scare her.”

Wells hung up.

Shafer spent the rest of the day talking to the U.S. Geological Survey and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, confirming that Iran could not have conducted an underground test without being caught. He knew he could have answered the question in a few minutes on Wikipedia, but he preferred to distract himself from the seventh floor’s silence.

The sun had set and he was reading the latest updates from Manila when his phone rang. Bunshaft. Shafer snatched the phone.

“Mind coming upstairs?”

It wasn’t a question.

“Of course.”

“I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

And there Bunshaft was, waiting for him like an old friend, leading him past the guard station that protected the suite where the director and his deputies worked. Bunshaft made a right, then a left. Suddenly Shafer knew where they were heading, a windowless conference room sometimes called SIS Jail, because it could be locked from outside. He’d seen it with Wells, years before. It wasn’t exactly Guantánamo. It had phones, a couch, a private bathroom. Mainly it was used to intimidate officers suspected of mid-level misbehavior like expense account fraud or leaking to the press.

So he was in worse trouble than he expected. He stopped. Bunshaft waved him on like they were headed for Hebley’s suite.

“Don’t bullshit me. I know this floor better than you.”

Bunshaft’s fake smile disappeared, then came back stronger. “Come on, Ellis. It’s just for a couple hours. Didn’t want you to get bored and go home.”

Arguing would be pointless. Shafer followed Bunshaft into the conference room, which was as studiously neutral as he remembered. He settled himself on the couch, pretending not to hear the click of the lock as Bunshaft left. A laptop and phone on the table, twin honeypots. Shafer wished he could warn Wells and Duto. But every call and every keystroke from these rooms was monitored in real time. He dialed his wife instead.

“Ellis.”

“Hi, babe.” In almost forty years of marriage, he had never called her that. He knew she’d understand.

“How was your day?” She coughed, trying to force the word out. 
“Babe.”

“Not bad. I’m stuck in a meeting. John might come by looking for me. If he does, just tell him you don’t know when I’ll be back.” The listeners could guess what he was doing, but he’d gotten the message out with enough deniability not to worsen his position, whatever his position was.

“Will do. Love you, Ellis. Hope you get home soon.”

“Me, too. I love you, babe.”

“Don’t push it.”

—

He watched the seconds slip into minutes and then hours. He closed his eyes, tried to meditate. But he’d never been much for meditation. He kept trying to calculate how many hours he had left. Life expectancy for a man his age couldn’t be more than twenty years. Twenty years, seventy-three hundred days, one hundred seventy-five thousand hours. Give or take. Sounded like a lot, but Shafer knew better. Like sands through the hourglass, et cetera, et cetera. Cheery thoughts. Maybe he ought to concentrate on the practical. He wondered if they’d keep him overnight. He’d sleep on the floor. His back couldn’t tolerate the couch.

Around eleven, the lock clicked open and Bunshaft walked into the room, followed by a tall man with a high-and-tight haircut, broad shoulders, and a perfectly round paunch. Like he’d swallowed a bowling ball. This was Max Carcetti, Hebley’s chief of staff. Hebley had been Carcetti’s patron in the Marines. They’d risen together until Hebley had four stars on his collar and Carcetti three of his own. Now Carcetti was the aide Hebley trusted most, the one who made problems disappear. Almost everyone at the top had someone like Carcetti. Except for guys like Duto, who preferred to play the role themselves.

Shafer stood. “General.”

Carcetti crossed the room in two big steps, put out a hand, crushed his bones in a Marine grip. “Ellis Shafer. Myth and legend. Sorry to meet you under these circumstances.”

If Carcetti was being polite, Shafer was in even more trouble than he thought. Carcetti and Bunshaft sat side by side across the table from Shafer. “Tell me what you told him,” Carcetti said. “Not the highlights. The whole thing.”

Shafer repeated the story that had led him and Wells to Glenn Mason.

“Ever met Mason?” Carcetti said when Shafer was done.

“No.”

“What about Veder?”

Shafer tried to remember. “Not that I recall.”

“Because, I have to say, the story is compelling. There’s only one problem.”

“Sir?” Shafer wasn’t in the habit of calling anyone
sir
, but the expression on Carcetti’s face suggested he ought to make the effort.

“Glenn Mason is dead. He’s been dead more than three years.”

ISTANBUL

To the reporters of AL JAZEERA and the others, the americans who died in the bombing in Manila are crusader spies. We have punished them for their crimes against the soldiers of ALLAH and the Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him. the true name of “william hansborough” is james Nicholas veder. he is Station chief of the Philippines for the central intelligence agency. The other two were his puppet-guards. All suffered the wrath of the righteous.

    Do not let this knowledge go silent. Tell the people all over, the believers and the unbelievers also. The court of the Islamic Army of Mecca and Medina has sentenced to death the spies of the c.i.a. Each and every one. Under Sharia. With the approval of all those who bow their heads before ALLAH. Death for the cruel attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. For their Cowardly drone bombings. There is no escape. THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH AND MUHAMMAD IS HIS PROPHET

Abu Bakr and the true Sunni Warriors of
THE ISLAMIC ARMY OF MECCA AND MEDINA

S
alome sat in the back of a Nissan sedan, reading the email on a two-year-old Dell laptop. She’d written it the afternoon before, when Duke called to confirm that the job was done. His men had stowed their motorcycles in an old cargo van, ditched the van in a long-term lot near the international airport in Manila. They would leave the Philippines one by one, by sea and air, for Hong Kong and Bangkok and Dubai. As always, time and planning were the best defense against surveillance. CIA, NSA, and the Philippine National Police would watch the airport and the international ferries. But hundreds of thousands of men entered and left the Philippines each week. Without a tip, the pool of possible suspects was too large to track.

A day had passed since the attack. It was nearly noon in Manila, morning in Istanbul, the sun still hidden behind the city’s eastern hills. Salome was about to send her email to reporters around the world. She would cc a copy to Veder’s CIA account, too, to be sure that the agency saw it immediately. She had intentionally written the email to appear over-the-top. Its real audience was the CIA, not the media. And the CIA already knew that the claim of responsibility was fake, that the Army of Mecca and Medina didn’t exist. After all, Reza had told Brian Taylor that Iran planned to invent a Sunni terrorist group to take credit for the assassination.

The Nissan stopped at a light on Tarlabası, a wide, grimy avenue that traced a scar through central Istanbul. Salome handed the Dell across the backseat to Vassily, a twenty-two-year-old Bulgarian who was her best hacker. Vassily had a rash of pimples on his chin and the pale doughy skin of a man who spent his life in basement rooms lit only by computer screens. He could easily be a virgin. He was at least half in love with Salome. She wondered if she should sleep with him, guarantee his loyalty forever. But the experience would be too much for him. He’d wind up obsessed. Anyway, he was already loyal. Let him enjoy his suffering. In her experience, Eastern European men were either sadists or masochists, and Vassily was no sadist.

“Send it.”

Vassily clicked open a map studded with green and yellow icons. “There’s an unlocked Wi-Fi three hundred meters down.”

The Nissan’s driver raised his eyes to her to show her he’d heard. He was a tall, slim man in his late thirties. He almost always wore a suit and almost never spoke. He was a former soldier who had nearly died in a motorcycle crash a decade before. The accident tore most of the skin from his legs, crushed his nose and chin. Then he had fallen into the trembling hands of an alcoholic surgeon whose repair efforts nearly killed him. Ultimately, another set of doctors repaired much of the damage, though up close the soldier’s cheeks and nose glowed with an unnatural shine.

He and Salome had lived two houses apart growing up. He was two years older than she, and they’d had their share of teenage fumblings. Nothing serious, but enough to give them reason to keep in touch, see each other on those rare occasions when both were home. In another life, she might have married him. After his accident, she visited him in the hospital a dozen times. She asked him once how he’d managed the pain. His eyes went flat.
Every day I prayed for the world to end,
he said.
Not just to die, for the whole world to end.

I understand
, she said. And she did. As a child, a teenager, she’d thought of herself as happy. But at twenty-two, she’d plunged into a depression so black that she couldn’t leave her room, couldn’t eat. Couldn’t even sleep. She lay on her floor, eyes open, waiting to die,
hoping
to die, knowing she wouldn’t. Worst of all, she had no idea what had triggered her pain. She’d was getting ready for her first year of law school. She had plenty of friends. No one in her family had died. She just . . . disappeared.

After nearly a month, her roommate insisted on taking her to a local infirmary. She was so terrified of being locked up that somehow she faked her way through a ten-minute interview with the doctor on duty. She walked out with an appointment with a psychiatrist and a prescription for Prozac.
This may take a few weeks to work,
he said.

But he was wrong. She could have been an advertisement for Eli Lilly. After a week, the clouds over the world had turned from black to gray. She could pretend to be human again. After a second week, she wasn’t pretending. Yet the experience profoundly unsettled her. She had lost her balance so easily, fallen so far so fast, that she could no longer trust herself, much less the rest of the world.

She couldn’t directly connect that episode to the choices she’d made in the years that followed, much less to the mission she’d chosen for herself. Yet she knew the link was real.

She wasn’t sure how much her driver knew about that lost month. He’d been serving at the time, and a few months later he’d crashed his bike. By the time the reconstructions were done, so was his military career. He disappeared to Africa, worked as a soldier of fortune and bodyguard. When she decided to devote her existence to this mission, she knew she would need one person she could trust absolutely. The list was short. He was at the top.

He agreed without hesitation. He had served as her driver and bodyguard ever since. He kept an eye on Vassily and the other bright boys when she couldn’t. But he wasn’t exactly her lieutenant. He’d never volunteered an opinion on what they were doing, whether it was moral, whether it even made sense. And she’d never asked.

Vassily ran a finger across the Dell’s battered black case, as close as he came to a sensual gesture. “After we send the email, you destroy this. Safest way, use it once and never again. Throw it in the Bosphorus, set it on fire, I don’t care. I have a hundred more.”

“I’m aware. You buy them with my money.”

Vassily picked up used laptops at flea markets in Belgrade and Sofia, wiped their hard drives, installed Linux or pirated copies of Windows as operating systems. Intel, AMD, and the other chip makers all embedded unique serial numbers in each processor they created, the computer equivalent of a vehicle identification number. But buying used laptops for cash broke the chain of custody and stopped everyone, including the NSA, from linking the chip serial numbers to the new owner.

Along with new operating systems, Vassily installed special antisurveillance software to block bugs, location finders, or keystroke capture programs. His programs were far more aggressive than the commercial antispyware that companies like Norton sold. They would wipe the entire hard drive if they discovered any suspicious program.

Salome’s email would be double-bagged, in hacker jargon, routed through an anonymizing server in Denmark, then a second in Iceland. Vassily had assured Salome that the NSA would need weeks to trace it to Istanbul, much less this wireless connection, which was an unlocked router that couldn’t be connected to them anyway. Even so, he had insisted that they use the laptop only once.
For a message this important, it’s the only safe way.
They track everything on the Internet. And it’s like a thread—once they start to pull it, no one can stop them. They make connections between an email you sent today, a phone call you made two years ago, a text message I sent from another phone that wasn’t even to you. You know the difference between God and the NSA?

The NSA doesn’t wish it was God.

—

“The router. Pull over.” The Nissan stopped. “No surveillance, clear signal. At your word.”

“Send it.”

Vassily typed, lifted his hands from the keyboard with a flourish. “All systems go, as the Americans say.” In the rearview mirror, the driver caught Salome’s eye:
Must he prattle so?

The sedan rolled on. Salome stowed the laptop on the floor, rested a hand on Vassily’s arm. He sighed like a dog whose master had just scratched his belly. “You’ve done well. We’ll drop you at the Galata.” The sigh turned to a grunt, but he didn’t argue.

Ten minutes later, the Nissan pulled over. “Remember what I said about this.” He tapped the laptop. His hand was the color of an egg-white omelet and not much firmer.

“Go,” Salome said.

The Galata Bridge was a wide, low span that crossed the eastern edge of the Golden Horn, a narrow channel that stretched west off the Bosphorus. To the north, a hilly neighborhood called Karaköy offered some of Istanbul’s best views. The plaza at the bridge’s southern end functioned as Istanbul’s Times Square, a transportation hub for locals and tourists alike. The bridge itself provided a close-up look at the never-ending parade of freighters, ferries, yachts, and cruise ships that made the Bosphorus one of the world’s most vital waterways.

On this morning, commuter traffic choked the Galata, though the sun had just appeared over the mosques and apartments on the eastern side of the Bosphorus. Winter clouds reflected the city’s lights onto the strait’s black waves, creasing it with streaks of orange and yellow. Finally, the Nissan crawled off the southern end of the bridge. It turned left onto a wide boulevard that circled the edge of the Eminönü peninsula, the end of Europe. The high walls of the Topkapi Palace loomed atop the hill above this road. For centuries, the Topkapi had been home to the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Now it was a museum for tourists.

Salome looked at the high brick walls of the palace. She saw Langley, and Fort Meade, and all the other high-security campuses that had sprouted in the forests around Washington. The Ottoman sultans had openly disdained their subjects. The DCI and the rest of America’s modern princes claimed to serve the people outside their walls. Maybe they even believed their speeches. But they had more in common with the Ottomans than they knew. Walls offered security, but at a price. They blinded those inside to the world around them. Salome was rescuing the princes from their insularity, forcing them to recognize a threat they should have already seen. For this heroism they would call her a traitor, if she was fool enough to let them discover her.

—

The Nissan pulled over. Salome handed her driver the laptop. He would make sure it was clean of fingerprints and leave it in an alley to be scavenged and resold. Salome preferred anonymous disposal to destruction. In the unlikely event that the Americans could track it based on a single email, they would be chasing a false trail.

“One hour.”

“One hour.”

She walked to the terminals that served the Bosphorus commuter ferries. Every hour, dozens of ships docked around the bridge. Thousands of men and women were now hurrying through the plaza on their way to work. A brisk ten-minute walk brought her west of the bridge, to the terminal for the busiest ferry of all, a short route that ran almost straight across the Bosphorus. The man who called himself Reza waited near a ticket booth. He smoked a cigarette and wore a shapeless windbreaker with a nylon hood that shadowed his head. A baseball cap and heavy plastic glasses further hid his face.

As Salome approached, he took a final drag on his cigarette and tossed it to his left. Left signaled that he had not been followed and could call Brian Taylor. Salome gave no sign that she’d noticed him. She kept walking. She was looking for surveillance overt or covert, Turkish police or plainclothes officers, anything out of the ordinary in the morning scrum. She didn’t expect anything. In the aftermath of Veder’s killing, the CIA would be desperate to talk to Reza, but it had no way of finding him. Still, she’d decided to check the plaza herself. She had to meet Reza after the call anyway.

She took one more look. The plaza was the usual perfect mess of confusion, nothing more or less. She joined the crowd heading south, her wordless symbol that she agreed he was clean. The moment was his.

—

Reza smoked one more cigarette. Then he pulled out a new, unused mobile phone that he’d bought for cash near the Grand Bazaar a couple weeks earlier. Nothing in the world was untraceable anymore, but Salome and Reza and Duke were trying. They knew NSA and CIA would try to pinpoint a call to Taylor’s phone even before Taylor picked up. The Turks might even be helping, though the CIA wouldn’t ask for local aid on a job this sensitive unless it saw no alternative.

Even NSA’s newest software couldn’t find a call from a prepaid handset instantaneously. In middle- and high-income countries, big telcos tolerated prepaids as a way to reach poorer customers. But they designed call-routing software to prioritize monthly subscribers. They were also very concerned with making sure that hackers didn’t find ways to beat their tolling systems and get free airtime. What all this interference meant in practice was that the NSA needed at least ninety seconds to lock down new prepaid phones.

Reza hoped to finish his call by then. But even if he went long, NSA would have no way to pick him out from every other commuter holding a phone. Surveillance cameras had become all but inescapable in major cities. The key to beating them was not hiding from them but confounding them with crowds.

Reza murmured in Farsi, amping himself up, getting into character.
You warned this CIA officer. Told him an attack was coming. He didn’t listen. The blood of these men in Manila, it’s on his hands. Not yours.
He looked around for his Revolutionary Guard minders, the men who would torture him and his family in Tehran if they knew he was making this call. Did they exist? Of course they existed. If they didn’t exist, he couldn’t betray them. Were they in this plaza even now, watching him?